Dear cluster users,

in the next few months, the University of Siegen will replace the HorUS cluster with a new and considerably more capable system. According to the current plans, the system will go live at the end of April (the initial plans were for the end of February, this will not be possible, mostly due to delays in the delivery of some components).

Overview of the new system

The system consists of the following compute partitions:

• 434 nodes in the regular HPC partition, which are equipped with AMD CPUs of type EPYC 7452 and 256 GB of RAM each.
• OpenStack and Kubernetes partitions (8 and 5 nodes respectively).
• 2 SMP nodes, each with 4 Intel Xeon 5218 CPUs (Cascade Lake) and 1.5 TB RAM.
• 10 GPU nodes with a total of 24 nVidia GPUs type Tesla V100 (4×4, 2×2, 4×1 GPUs per node)

The storage capacity is 1 Petabyte of primary hard drive space, additionally there is a burst buffer of SSDs (32 Terabytes) and 48 TB of Object Storage space. The flexible concept allows us to adjust the relative sizes of these storage complexes in the future if necessary.

The high-speed interconnect used throughout the cluster is of type Infiniband HDR100.

The following information represents the current state of planning and may change until the new cluster starts operating.

What will change about access and login?

Like the HoRUS cluster, the new cluster will be available to all members of the University of Siegen. The same cluster address will continue to be used and will point to the new cluster after the end of the transition phase at the latest.

What will be the name of the new cluster?

The cluster does not have a name yet. We will have a naming contest for it soon.

Will the other compute resources also be replaced by the new cluster?

No, the HPE Moonshot HTC system and the recently acquired NEC SX-Aurora Tsubasa vector system (more information about that in the near future) will continue to be available.

How do I get my data from HoRUS to the new cluster?

During the transition phase you will have enough time to copy whatever information you need.

Which operating system will the new cluster use?

The OS will be CentOS 8 (HoRUS currently uses CentOS 7). The job scheduler used will be SLURM, just like on HoRUS.

What software will be available on the new cluster?

There will be a collection of commercial software and non-commercial software for a variety of purposes, similar to the HoRUS cluster. You will also be able to request the installation of additional software, we will decide this on a case-by-case basis.

If you have any other questions, email us at hpc-support@uni-siegen.de

Best regards
Your HPC Team

Dear cluster users,

this news message is intended to give an overview over the many possibilities you have for training courses about HPC and related topics. There are multiple courses offered both by ZIMT and others available to you – most of them for free.

• First of all, we offer our own courses for you every semester, alternating betwen German and English. Our Cluster Introduction Course is particularly of note, as we highly recommend that every one of our users attend this course at least once. There are other, for example about Linux and starting next semester there will be one about MATLAB. You can find information on the Training page of our website.
• In addition, we will offer courses by invited external trainers, which will also be announced on the website and this mailing list.
• In addition to ZIMT, several institutes of Uni Siegen offer classes concerning scientific computing. One example is the chair of Simulation and Scientific Computing, belonging to the Mechanical Engineering department, with courses like “Introduction to Programming with Python”, also available in German as an online class in Moodle. Do you know other lectures which you think might be interesting to the Siegen HPC community (e.g. about programming, MATLAB or Software Engineering)? Tell us: hpc-support@zimt.uni-siegen.de
• As an NRW-wide effort, the HPC Wiki has been established, offering a steadily growing pool of information related to HPC. We will increase the information concerning Siegen-specific topics in the near future.
• We would also like to point out the HPC Calendar of the association of HPC Centers in Germany (Gauss Alliance), which is embedded into our website as well. You can find information on courses throughout Germany there. These trainings usually do not take place at Uni Siegen, but for members of German universities they are often cheap or even free. Registration for these events is of course handled by the respective university or institution.
• If you are not sure what kind of training is right for you, just ask us: hpc-support@zimt.uni-siegen.de

Best regards
Your HPC Team

Dear cluster users,

the next Linux introduction course will take place on February 4, 2020 and will take all day. The course will be held in German (with slides in English). This course is held every semester, alternating between German and English. If you wish to participate, switch to the German-language version of this page for more information.

Dear cluster users,

ZIMT has recently aquired an HPE Moonshot system, which, like HorUS, is available to everyone at the university. This system can be used for compute jobs in addition to HorUS.

The difference to HorUS is that the Moonshot technology is specialized for so-called High Throughput Computing. This term refers to workloads which consist of a large numer of small independent compute jobs (as opposed to High Performance Computing which describes small numbers of large interdependent jobs).

The Moonshot system is mostly integrated into HorUS and uses a separate SLURM queue ( htc) for submitting jobs. Your Home and Workspace directories and most environment modules are the same. You can also submit htc jobs from HorUS and vice versa.

If you believe that your computations are suitable for the Moonshot system we would be glad if you could test the system and give us feedback about your tests (hpc-support@uni-siegen.de).

Please note that the CPU architecture is different from HorUS and we have not tested each module. If you have problems with individual applications please contact us.

Further usage tips can be found here:

https://cluster.uni-siegen.de/htc-system-hpe-moonshot/?lang=en

We will be adding other systems in the near future and will keep you informed.

Best regards
Your HPC Team

Dear cluster users,

there are still open spots on the next cluster introduction course on this Thursday (Nov. 7). If you would like to participate, send an e-mail to jan.steiner@uni-siegen.de. More information here.

Best regards
Your HPC Support Team

Dear cluster users,

the problem has been solved and all partitions are available without restrictions again. We apologize for any inconveniences the restart might have caused.

Best regards,

your HPC Team.

Dear cluster users,

the next cluster introduction course will be held (in English) on  November 7 and will take all afternoon. You can find more information here.

The course covers the basics for new cluster users. We recommend that every cluster user attend this course at least once. The course takes place at least once per semester, alternating between German and English.

If you would like to participate, please send an e-mail to jan.steiner@uni-siegen.de.

Dear cluster users,

this semester, the lecture “High Performance Computing in the Simulation Sciences” will be held by the chair of Simulation Technology and Simulation (Mechanical Engineering Department). It will be held every Tuesday 12:00-14:00 c.t. in room PB-A 337.

The lecture will be held in German, although the materials will be in English.

For more information, switch to the German language version of this post or contact monika.harlacher@uni-siegen.de.

Dear cluster users,

the next Linux Introduction Course will take place on September 26 and take all day. It will be held in English.

The basics of Linux will be covered. We recommend that all users who are inexperienced with Linux take this course. The course takes place once per semester, alternating between German and English.

If you want to participate, please send an e-mail to jan.steiner@uni-siegen.de.

Topics:

• General Linux concepts
  • Command line
  • Processes, users and permissions
• Files and directories
  • Wildcards
• Scripting
  • Environment variables
  • Pipes etc.
• Other concepts
  • System configuration files
  • Symbolic links and aliases
  • Tips and tricks

Presenter:

Jan Steiner

Date:

September 26, 2019

Location:

H-D 2202

Duration:

9:00-17:00

Max. participants:

12

Language:

English

Target audience:

Employees and Students who are completely new to Linux

Prerequisites:

None

Remarks:

If you do not have your own device, there are desktop clients available.

You do not need access to the HorUS cluster to participate, but you may use your own account if you prefer.

Registration:

Simply send an e-mail to jan.steiner@uni-siegen.de. Also, please indicate whether you intend to bring your own laptop and which operating system it has.

If you are interested but do not have time on the specified date, please notify us as well. We will hold another course if enough people are interested.